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An Integrated Facultative Pond System for Agricultural Wastewater Treatment

Published by the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers, St. Joseph, Michigan www.asabe.org

Citation:  Paper number  024160,  2002 ASAE Annual Meeting . (doi: 10.13031/2013.9295) @2002
Authors:   John D. Harrison, Todd J. Miller, Benjamin R. Sessions,
Keywords:   Agricultural wastewater treatment system, integrated facultative pond, duckweed, Spirulina algae

The need to comply with increasingly strict local and federal regulations and the desire to improve relations with neighbors and the environment are motivating agricultural operators to implement cost-effective wastewater treatment strategies. An Integrated Facultative Pond system (IFP) was designed and constructed to address these issues. The system is designed to reduce the pollution potential and odor in agricultural wastewater and produce profitable byproducts in the process. The wastewater flows through a series of ponds that utilize various biofiltering organisms to clean the water. The biomass and nutrients from the wastewater are transferred to natural biocleansing organisms. During the cleansing process valuable resources such as biogas, duckweed and Spirulina algae are harvested. These products can be used to power generators, heat water, and remove potentially harmful nutrients from the wastewater or as feed supplements for livestock. Preliminary results indicate that the IFP system was able to remove 88.9% of the TS, 52.4 % of the TDS, 99.3% of the turbidity, 95.0% of the COD, 98.2% of nitrate, 98.1% of ammonia, 93.4% of the TKN, 95.9% of the acid-hydrolyzable phosphorus, 87.2% of the reactive phosphorus, and 25.1% of the conductivity. The duckweed has reached a doubling time of 3 days, biogas is being produced and the algae are growing at a sufficient quantity to be cultured with the wastewater.

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